Disney has purchased Lucasfilm Studios, the brainchild of Star Wars director George Lucas, for a cool US$4.5-billion, according to reports. And what’s more, the film giant plans to release a new Star Wars film — Episode VII — by 2015, with Lucas himself as a “creative consultant.

You know, I think these are very bad news (I'll expand on that tomorrow, this news are being hard to digest). When I first saw the official press release, I thought it was a joke, but unfortunately it's not.

So Lucasfilm will now be headed by Kathleen Kennedy, who was the producer of: ET, Poltergeist, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Steven Hawking's A Brief History of Time, Hook, Tiny Toons, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Twister, The Sixth Sense, Seabiscuit, Munich, War Horse, and Lincoln. Maybe this won't be so bad....

But then again she was also the Executive Producer of The Last Airbender and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull so maybe it WILL be as bad as I think

Hmm. Didn't see THAT one coming so I have to agree. Yet star tours is in disneyland where I bought my forceFX luke skywalker collectible saber...I can't say I'm all that surprised. We can only pray that an episode 7 either won't contradict the previously established canon of EU, OR that it won't cheapen SW as a whole. But not both. It'd be nice if it went both ways but things rarely ever work out so well.

As Rox already pointed out, the person to be heading it has a track record of more good than bad so there is some hope. Still I'm not holding my breath; I'm all inside.

Disney CEO Robert Iger briefly discussed Disney's plans for game development using the intellectual properties acquired in the acquisition, saying, "We're likely to focus more on social and mobile than we are on console. We'll look opportunistically at console, most likely in licensing rather than publishing, but we think that given the nature of these characters and how well known they are, and the storytelling, that they lend themselves quite nicely, as they've already demonstrated to the other platforms."

I am nervous as ****. The EU is so vast and well-put together. I'm worried that Disney will **** all over it. Lucas has been alright about respecting the EU stuff, for the most part, but Disney is uncharted territory.

Oh I dunno, he did such a fantastic job on Star Trek that to me he has proven his worth in rebooting a franchise. I'm very happy it's J.J. Abrams and not someone like Michael Bay or Christopher Nolan. Can you imagine? The horrror.

Being human totally sucks most of the time.
Videogames are the only thing that
make life bearable. - Anorak's Almanac, Chapter 91, Verses 1-2